


how to save a life

by msermesth



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Depressed Steve, Discussion of Past Suicide Attempt, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Missing Scene, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24742822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msermesth/pseuds/msermesth
Summary: Tony overhears something on the eve of the Time Heist.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	how to save a life

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE review the tags on this one.
> 
> This fic has been languishing in my WIP folder under the working title of “kinda sad thing.” It isn’t meant to be shippy, but you’re welcome to read it that way.

There was music in the background. Nothing loud or distracting, but it still sent a strong beat pumping through the compound. Who was left of the Avengers had come together for an informal gathering to celebrate the breakthroughs they were making towards the planned ‘time heist.’ Tony closed his eyes and let the sounds of people talking and laughing and milling around sweep over him. He couldn't remember the name of the song playing, but recognized it from something he would have overheard at a party in the early 2000’s. Someone in this room had chosen this playlist, and for a while trying to decipher exactly _who_ was a very amusing game. 

It was a good night. All of them had been putting in late nights planning and experimenting, and that had left very little time for them to just be a group of people who had spent a lot of their lives together. People who could be comfortable drinking and unironically listening to Nickelback. Tony realized how much he had been yearning to be a team again. 

So, sitting here, smelling the fading scent of half eaten pizza, and looking from Avenger to Avenger, was very, very good. 

“He looks like he’s doing ok,” Tony heard Rhodey say.

Tony was just about to turn around and find out what Rhodey was talking about when Natasha responded, “Yeah, he does.” Instinct told Tony they weren’t talking to him or about him, so he was content to sit there. “It was a little rough there for a couple of years, but he’s bouncing back.”

“I heard he’s leading support groups in the city.” Rhodey was keeping his voice quiet and that was strange, since they were clearly talking about Steve. Did they know Tony could hear them?

“Uh-huh. It’s an outgrowth of the one he had been going to.”

“That’s good.” A pause. “That day…I was so scared he was gone.”

“Huh?” Tony asked while he turned to join the conversation. 

Natahsa was nonchalant, but Rhodey’s face went still and his mouth clamped shut like he was sharing a really important secret. Something was up. 

“What’re you talking about?” he prodded. 

“It’s nothing,” Rhodey said before his eyes quickly darted in the direction of Steve. It didn’t look like it was nothing.

Natasha picked some lint off her shirt. 

Tony looked over his shoulder to Steve, who was playing a game with Thor that looks awfully like beer pong if it had been adapted for two people with extraordinary aim. It was mesmerizing to watch Steve land a shot into a cup of what was probably _not_ beer by bouncing the ping pong ball across three different walls and the ceiling.

Thor’s smile at Steve’s small accomplishment wasn’t enough to quell Tony’s uneasiness at watching Thor drink, but he could recognize the drink-and-not-talk-about-it approach men had developed to avoid discussing their feelings. It was often tried, and never true.

But at least Thor was smiling as Steve slapped him across the back. At least trying to forget with a friend was better than trying alone.

Tony’s thoughts followed without needing to be prompted. “What do you mean ‘it was rough for a few years’?” he asked. Post Decimation, that could mean anything.

Rhodey gave Nat a look that was clearly asking her how much he was allowed to say. She glanced at Steve, less subtle than Tony would expect from her. It seemed in the last five years she had shed a lot of her spy instincts.

“What was so terrifying about ‘that day’?” Tony put emphasis on that last ominous phrase.

“It’s a long story,” Rhodey said in obvious deflection. Nat was silent, still weighing something on her mind.

Tony looked between the two of them and tried to decide which one would be more likely to say something to him later. Just as he decided he could pressure Rhodey into talking if he got him alone, Nat spoke up.

“Four years ago, Steve stepped in front of a train.”

The sentence bounced around Tony’s mind so much it became just a jumble of words with no connections to each other. “Who was he fighting?” he asked. He hadn’t heard anything about Steve getting hurt.

Natasha swallowed and Rhodey placed a hand on her shoulder. “No, you don’t understand, he--” she said, and her voice broke before she could continue.

“It wasn’t a fight, or an accident…” Rhodey’s eyes had found something on a far wall to look at. “or...fuck, Tony. Don’t make me say it.”

Without being told to, Tony followed the two of them into the hallway. The music wasn’t any quieter there, but it was private, discreet. It was that move, and not Rhodey’s evasion, that clarified what they were talking about.

“No,” Tony said. Such a simple word. He didn’t want to say it aloud either.

But he had to know, despite the black despair settling like tar in his gut. He _had_ to know. 

This time Tony asked the question with full knowledge of what they were talking about. “What happened?” 

“I got a call,” Rhodey began. His gaze was focused neither on Tony or the wall behind him. “From my cousin, actually. She knew someone, who’s a nurse in Philly.”

Tony nodded his head as if he understood.

“Turns out they had a very strange patient. He was clearly a suicide attempt who shouldn’t have survived.” Rhodey had settled into his ‘report’ voice. “The only identification they had were dog tags with Steve Rogers’ name, but initially everyone just thought that was someone’s last sick joke.”

Horror. The feeling that was filling Tony was horror. 

“Or at least that’s what they thought before he started healing before they could help--”

“It took two days before we even knew,” Natasha cut in to say. She still had her one-thousand-yard stare. “ _Two. Days_.”

Tony cut a look back at Steve. From this vantage point it looked like Thor was trying to goad him into singing an Asgardian war ballad.

Natasha continued. “We were able to find some people to help--”

“Under the guise of it being an ‘accident’--”

“But it took a week before he even--”

Tony cut them both off. “Why didn’t I know this?” He fixed his stare on Rhodey. For Natasha, keeping a secret had been easier than breathing, but Rhodey, Rhodey should have told him. 

“It wasn’t my thing to tell.” Rhodey said, so damn sure of himself. 

“But…” Tony stopped himself before he finished the sentence. He tried, in his head, to construct an argument where Rhodey should have told him. Nothing stuck. 

Behind Rhodey, Clint had convinced Steve and Thor to play another round of their silly drinking game. On another day, Tony would want to get that on YouTube.

“I didn’t know,” Tony whispered to himself. He tried to think of Steve as he knew him the last five years and couldn’t point to any obvious signs that something was wrong. Sure, he seemed sad, but so did everyone else after Thanos. 

And if he was quiet...well, that was Steve, right? There was nothing surprising about that.

“Tony, you know the statistics,” Rhodey said, clearly prodding him to respond. 

Tony did know about the dramatic increase in suicides after the Snap. “Captain America isn’t a statistic,” he pleaded. 

Across the room, Clint was celebrating a victory. There was a honest-to-goodness smile on his face. Tony knew Nat and Rhodey were watching him absorb what he was hearing. It seemed as if they were waiting for it to click. 

“I don’t know…” Tony began, not sure at all how to end that sentence. “He’s ok?” It was half a question and half a statement. Steve was, for a fact, grinning broadly on the other side of the room. It was all ok, right? 

“His body healed, faster than he probably should have. Faster than any of us could grapple with.” Natasha said, studying her nails. “I asked him to move into the compound so that he could recuperate, but--” She sighed and picked at a cuticle. “He wouldn’t. I...uh, _none_ , of us knew what to do. He didn’t want to talk about it, and for once, I couldn’t figure out a way around that.”

 _So you just gave up?_ Tony thought, even if he knew it wasn’t true. Natasha wasn’t really a ‘giving up’ type of person. “Did he get help?” _Could anyone help?_

“For a long time I didn’t know.” Natasha’s voice had picked up a little, the flat tone giving way to something else. “But then I heard about the support groups he was leading--from the damn internet, not him--and I figured something must have happened, you know?

That wasn’t a good enough answer for Tony. All it told him was that Steve was keeping busy. Keeping busy was not getting better. “So what, we’re all just going to pretend this didn’t happen?”

“We’re talking about it, aren't we?” Rhodey snapped.

“Yes, four years later!” Tony’s voice was louder than it should have been, but the music drowned him out.

“There wasn’t anything we _could_ do. You know, I saw this a lot back with the guys I used to serve with--”

“I _tried_ , Tony. I promise.” Natasha’s voice broke at the end of the sentence. “I talked to him whenever I could.”

Tony looked over the room. Bruce and Scott had joined the game but had none of the skill Steve, Thor, or Clint brought. 

“I know, I know...I just don’t want to believe it.” Tony said as he sagged against the wall. 

“I used to get worried back before everything.” Natasha waved her hand vaguely, leaving Tony to only assume she meant Thanos. “But it wasn’t like that. At least I hope it wasn’t.”

“I really missed Sam right then,” Rhodey said.

“He was always the most in tune with this sort of stuff.”

Tony nodded. Not in agreement or anything, but he understood the sentiment. He felt helpless. Now he had a new fear screaming in the back of his head and it wanted to tame it into something else through work and effort. He wanted to fix it.

He stepped away from the cluster they had made and walked towards where the rest of the group was laughing. Rhodey called his name behind him, but Tony didn’t stop walking until he grabbed Steve’s upper arm and pulled him away from the team. “Can we talk?” he whispered in Steve’s ear. 

Steve looked surprised. “Of course.” He followed Tony out of the compound. Tony didn’t really know where they were going and it was only coincidence that he came across a bench near the end of the complex. 

“Here,” Tony muttered to himself and he sat down on the chilly wood.

Instead of joining him, Steve stood awkwardly above him. His bulk blocked out the moon and the rest of the lights that illuminated the outside of the compound. It left his face obscured by the darkness and Tony feeling like he was talking to a shadow.

“What’s wrong, Tony?” Steve asked. 

_Shit, shit, shit,_ Tony thought. He didn’t want to start this conversation with Steve on the defensive. “Why do you think anything’s wrong?”

“It just seems like something is wro--”

“You know you can talk to me, right?” Tony cut in to ask. “If something happens, you can always, _always_ , talk to me. I’ll listen. I get it, I do, I’ve been some really dark places before, and I--”

“What are you talking about?” Steve asked, clearly confused. That is, until it must have made sense, and he sat down next to Tony so suddenly the bench rocked. “ _Who_ told you?” Panic shook Steve’s body. Tony watched as his eyes bulged while trying to look somewhere over Tony’s shoulder. 

This was the part Tony wasn’t sure how to handle. “Does it matter?”

“It’s not...I didn’t want...Tony, I’m _fine_.” He said it _fine_ like he had rehearsed it many times.

Tony wasn’t sure about that. No one was really _fine_ these days, but everyone kept saying it over and over until it became the mantra of the Post-Snap Age. “I just wanted you to know that you can talk about it with someone. No judgments, I promise.”

Steve was quiet and almost stone-still. Tony couldn’t tell if he was thinking too hard or if he had shut off completely. Silence was normally something that was out of Tony’s comfort zone; he longed to jump in with more to say, anything at all, but he waited.

When Steve spoke again, his voice had grown softer. “It was a bad time. I…I was thinking a lot about how much I wish it had been me...on that day...you know?” He took a deep breath and Tony fought the urge to tell him, he _did_ know. “So many people were lost, and it was all my fault--”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Tony interrupted him to say. “Thanos--”

Steve just shook his head. “I know that.” A pause. “I mean, some days, I know that. But my point was that I didn’t back then. So I was going around, helping where I could around the country for a while, and every day was so, so difficult, more so than it used to be, at least, and the idea came to me.” He sat a little straighter, as if gathering the courage to continue. “And after that, there wasn’t much thinking going on.”

Tony argued with himself whether or not he should reach out and place a hand on Steve’s shoulder. It seemed like not nearly enough. He wanted to reach out and bring Steve closer with both arms, hug him hard enough that there wasn’t any way Steve could doubt how seriously he was taking this conversation. 

As soon as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t an option. They had known each other for more than ten years and never once had they hugged. They couldn’t seem to relax around the other long enough to share that sort of physical contact. Steve and him had become two alpha males fighting to prove...what, exactly? Tony didn’t know. 

He did know that all they had done in their time as teammates was shake hands, _like men_. Like there was some truth to the bullshit maxim that you can judge a man based on his handshake. 

Like two people who never thought they’d end up in a conversation this personal with the other.

Tony reached out for the hand Steve was resting on his thigh and gently held it between both of his own. He realized halfway through the gesture that cradling Steve’s hand was much more intimate than a hug, but by then there was no going back. He cautiously tightened his grip and then relaxed so they were left sitting there on the cold bench looking out into the dark.

A minute or two later Steve’s shoulders relaxed with a _whoosh_ of his breath. The song inside changed to something by The Fray as the wind around them calmed. “I mean it,” Tony said as he released Steve’s hand. “You can call whenever you need to.”

Steve didn’t say anything for a little while, but just when Tony was about to say it again in case he didn’t hear, Steve opened his mouth. “I will.” He smiled, just a little, and Tony saw the silhouette against the lights from the compound inside. “And…” He took a deep breath and finally looked at Tony. “My phone’s always on if you need to talk about anything.”

‘Anything’ could mean anything, but Tony was pretty sure Steve’s referring to Tony’s admission of his own dark moments. He wanted to say that everything was ok right now and Steve didn’t need to worry, and really, he didn’t. At least, not right now. 

And he knew how hard it is to make that phone call and say something, how it always felt like he was making himself into someone else’s problem. 

“I will,” he said, despite the instinct to deny and deflect. 

Steve nodded and gripped Tony’s hand. 

It was a promise. They shook hands to cement it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading.
> 
> If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, know that it’s ok to not be ok and you can always reach out to someone. [ Here’s a list of crisis centers across the globe](https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/). Steve, Tony, and fandom are glad you're here.


End file.
